Centro B: Propuestas curriculares que avanzan hacia la ciudadanía

This galaxy-quasar pair has had an absolutely amazing history. Back in 1971, Bur-bidge et al. derived a probability of accidental association of less than one in three thousand. A. Boksenberg and W.L.W. Sargent found absorption lines of the galaxy in the spectrum of the quasar in 1978 and assumed it was a distant, background quasar shining through the galaxy, a chance coincidence. In 1982, Vera Rubin et al. went further and attributed the spectral shift of the galaxy absorption lines to rotation around a massive galaxy taking place at an unusually large distance from its nucleus. Naturally, the latter calculation produced a mass of “dark” (undetectable) matter some 16 times the estimated mass of visible matter. Despite the enormity of this factor, it was hailed as proof of the existence of enormous amounts of unseen matter in the universe. But the galaxy was patently not an ordinary galaxy. It was a sharply bounded, very high surface brightness “star burst” galaxy—a rare and active kind of galaxy, which would make the

Fig. 1-15. Kitt Peak 4 meter photograph of NGC3067 showing high surface brightness and shattered appearance of absorption filaments.

Fig. 1-16. Palomar 200-inch photograph of NGC3067 in light of hydrogen alpha emission showing ejected, hot gaseous filaments

accidental association with a quasar hundreds of times less likely. Moreover, pictures of the galaxy revealed a shattered, explosive morphology with emission line filaments issuing from it (Figures 1-15 and 16). Under no circumstances could it be a normal galaxy in equilibrium rotation, which would be required in order to derive a meaningful mass. The huge derived mass was a complete fiction! Why didn’t they look at the galaxy? (Actually I sent pictures, but to no avail).

An even more startling development occurred in 1989 when C.L. Carilli et al.

found a filament of neutral hydrogen leading from the west end of the galaxy directly to and beyond the quasar! (Figure 1-17). The hydrogen had clearly come from the active galaxy—how else other than being pulled out by the ejection of the quasar? And notice that the quasar falls just at the densest point of the hydrogen distribution with contours of less dense gas trailing back towards the galaxy.

This extraordinary result should have cemented the association beyond any doubt, but later it was claimed that the configuration was merely accidental. J. Stocke et al.

argued that the neutral hydrogen at the redshift of the galaxy absorbed continuum light from the quasar, but did not show excited optical emission lines, proving the quasar was quite far in back of the hydrogen filament. Because the other arguments are so overwhelming that we are dealing with another physically associated galaxy and quasar, I reread very carefully the complex calculations they had made. There it was: a “short”

extrapolation. The photons they needed to ionize the hydrogen in the filament and make it fluoresce were at shorter wavelength than those in the spectrum. So they extrapolated to an unobserved portion of the spectrum. I extrapolated and got half their value. But regardless of how much quasar radiation was extrapolated to be shorter than

Fig. 1-17. Radio map of neutral hydrogen in NGC3067 showing filament leading from disturbed galaxy to quasar. Map from Carilli, van Gorkom and Stocke.

this wavelength, the actual amount would be determined by the amount of hydrogen at redshifts intermediate between the quasar and the hydrogen filament, the degree to which the filament was composed of small, dense clouds, and the relative beaming angle between the ultraviolet and radio wavelengths from the quasar. If the conven-tional paradigm had instead required the quasar and filament to be adjacent, which of these plausible configurations would have been announced as a new “discovery”?

The X-ray fun had only just begun. When the Einstein Laboratory Satellite went up, it observed the quasar because it was quite a bright object. At a workshop at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), I pointed out that there was an X-ray tail coming off the quasar in a direction opposite to the galaxy. Martin Elvis from the Cambridge Center for Astrophysics (CFA) jumped up and said, “That’s noise.” I argued that you could see that it was not noise. He said, “I’ll look into it and report what I find.” He never reported back.

When I got the relatively short 5600 sec exposure on it with ROSAT, there was the X-ray extension north of the quasar! In fact, there was another cross extension of X-rays (Figure 1-18)—quite similar to the configuration around Mark474. But the most exciting result was that there was a double-sided X-ray jet coming out of the nucleus of the starburst galaxy, NGC3067 (Figure 1-19). How many galaxies does one find with such conspicuous bipolar X-ray jets? When I showed this to my MPE colleagues they became angry at me for saying that I thought the jet was curving slightly around as it extended NE, even more toward the quasar, and that a longer exposure might show it leading directly to the quasar. Others said they thought the X-ray extensions from the quasar were just noise. Further X-ray observations on the object were rejected by the allocation committee.

Fig. 1-18. Integrated, low surface brightness X-ray emission around the galaxy/quasar pair NGC3067/3C232. This represents another “cross”

extension of X-ray material from active objects.